


Sick Day

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: My Family (And Other Dinosaurs) [35]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3269771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lester is never good at admitting he's sick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fredbassett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/gifts).



> Belated birthday present for Fred! I hope you like it, hon. *snuggles* Luka beta’d this for me. Just in case anyone is confused, Nicky is Lester’s youngest son – he changed his name to match his mother’s after the divorce.

            Lorraine Wickes laid a sheaf of forms on his desk and stood back, serene face blank enough to hide a criticism Lester could feel rolling off her in waves. He sneezed. Miss Wickes, unlike most of his colleagues, did not flinch. Neither did she fold irritable arms and snap something Scottishly indignant about a plague house, but that was Cutter for you, and Lester had it on good authority that he was now sneezing all over the rest of the anomaly team, so karma had evidently struck a blow for hard-working employers everywhere.

 

            Lester pulled a tissue from his desk drawer and blew his nose. Miss Wickes watched in silence. Lester did not give her the satisfaction of asking her why she was still cluttering up his office.

 

            “Sir,” Miss Wickes said after several minutes. “Just as a point of interest, have you at any time today considered going home?”

 

            “No,” Lester said, trying to convey finality.

 

            “The ARC won’t fall apart if you take a day off,” Miss Wickes said, clearly refusing to have finality conveyed to her.

 

            Lester sneezed and blew his nose again. “Is that so?”

 

            Miss Wickes almost folded her arms. “Sir, you know as well as I do that you caught this from me. I know just how awful you feel right now, and I know that I had to go home – and furthermore that you enlisted Lieutenant Owen to send me home.”  


            “No,” Lester corrected. “This is not the foul lurgy you had, it is a comparatively minor cold acquired from my youngest child. You were so good as to stay off work until no longer contagious.” He did not add ‘for once’, or speculate as to her boyfriend’s role in keeping her safely tucked up in bed recuperating. He thought his point had been suitably made.

 

            “Sir, am I going to have to ask Lieutenant Owen to come up here and bring a thermometer with him?”

 

            “No,” Lester said definitely, and turned his attention back to his computer, studiously ignoring his PA. She was making a lot of fuss about nothing. Nicky had handled this cold perfectly well, no matter how much he’d complained about being sent to school on Monday morning, and fortunately after that he was his mother Kathy’s headache, not Lester’s.

 

            It was true that Lester felt somewhat hot, and that his hands shook if unoccupied. It was equally true that he hadn’t wanted breakfast that morning, and had had to take a couple of paracetamol before coming in. And Liz, who’d treated Nicky’s malingering with rather more contempt than it deserved, had given him a very worried look on the way out…

 

            He wondered if he could prevail on Miss Wickes to fetch him a glass of water, decided against it on the grounds that a stroll to the nearest water-cooler would do him good, and stood up. The world twisted around him, and he sat down again rather heavily. It twisted some more and dimmed at the edges, and he retained the presence of mind to hit the intercom before he shut his eyes and the world went dark and quiet.

 

***

 

            “Anyone else,” Jenny Lewis said, standing outside Lester’s office with her closest colleague and watching Lieutenant Owen bully their boss into taking care of his own health, “would say ‘I told you so’.”

 

            Lorraine Wickes folded her arms. “I’m thinking it.”

 

            Jenny snorted. “Are you going to say it aloud?”

 

            “Not unless he makes me.”

 

            Jenny carefully didn’t smile. “Any upcoming disasters?”

 

            “No. There was going to be a meeting, but I’ve moved it, and I’ve set up the Out of Office, and put an email out reminding people of the importance of sick leave.”

 

            “Pot, meet kettle,” Jenny said. She’d sent Lorraine down to the infirmary last week, and had driven her home when Ditzy had duly confirmed that she was too sick to work. “James isn’t fit to drive, is he?”

 

            “Ah – no,” Lorraine said, the tone of her voice clearly indicating that she was going to rise above her colleague’s comments. “I’ll call Lieutenant Lyle.”

 

            “Mm.” Jenny tapped her manicured fingernails on the steel rail of the balcony. “Cutter was sneezing like a steam train earlier, and he looks fevered to me. What do you think my chances are of persuading him to go home?”

 

            “Slim to none,” Lorraine said tartly, heading back into her office. “Wait till he faints.”

 

           

            When Lorraine called James Lester’s home phone number, Lyle didn’t pick up the phone.

 

            “-oh my God, Liz, stop it!” an unfamiliar, laughing girl’s voice said. “Um. Hi?”

 

            “Hello. Can I speak to Lieutenant Lyle? Or failing that, Liz?”

 

            “Who should I say is calling?”

 

            “Her father’s PA.”

 

            “Okay.”

 

            There was a rustling noise, and another girl spoke, her voice distinctly sharper and less sweet than her friend’s. (Or girlfriend’s. Lorraine had never met Juliet Sayers, but she’d put good money on the identity of the girl who’d picked up the phone.) “Hi.”

 

            “Good afternoon, Liz,” Lorraine said politely. “How’s Spot?”

 

            “Barking mad,” Liz answered, completing the code exchange that told both her and Lorraine that they were speaking freely and without constraints to either a genuine member of Lester’s family who was aware of the ARC’s existence or a genuine employee at the ARC. Lorraine understood that Lester’s younger brother and sister-in-law did in fact own a dog called Spot, which probably helped. “Hey, Lorraine. How’s it going?”

 

            “Your father fainted at work, but he’s all right. The flu is going round the office.”

 

            “No way! I thought that was my thing. Did he hit anything on the way down?”

 

            “No,” Lorraine said soothingly, storing away the information that working until they dropped was apparently a Lester family characteristic. “Ditzy’s checking him out, but I suspect the verdict will be home and bed for at least forty-eight hours. Is Lyle awake?”

 

            “Yeah. He’s been up since before I got back from school.”

 

            “Can you pass him the phone?”

 

            “No problem.”

 

            Lorraine heard Liz walking through her flat, and then hammering on a door.

 

            “Jon! Lorraine on the phone for you!”

 

            “What is it?” Lorraine heard distantly, and then more loudly: “Hi, Miss Wickes. Trouble in paradise?”

 

            “James isn’t well,” Lorraine said. “He has the flu that’s been going round and he fainted. He’s not seriously sick, but he needs to go home and he’s not fit to drive.”

 

            “Has he got what you had? Because you looked like you’d been dragged through a mangle last week.”

 

            Lorraine rolled her eyes. “How many more weeks of night shifts would you like, Lieutenant?”

 

            “None, ma’am.”

 

            “I thought not.”

 

            “I’ll come and pick James up now.”

 

            “Thank you.”

 

            “Give me – oh, half an hour.”

 

            “I’ll tell James.”

                                                                                                                        

***

 

            “A little birdie told me you were busy making yourself sick,” Lyle observed, shutting the door behind him. “You look like death.”

 

            Lester, who was sitting at his desk with his computer off – and, in fact, unplugged – sipping grumpily at a cup of soothing honey and lemon, glowered. “I caught this from Nicky,” he said, and sneezed. “Work has nothing to do with it.”  


            “You’ve given it to half the bloody ARC by the look of things.” Lyle forbore to comment on the unsoothing and unhelpful nature of working eleven-hour days on top of a burgeoning dose of the flu.

 

            Lester withdrew a previously immaculate linen handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly in lieu of an answer.

 

            Lyle’s slightly mocking grin softened. “Come on, let’s go home. You’re shattered, James.”

 

            Lester’s compressed mouth relaxed slightly. “I am… tired.”

 

            “There’s a confession for the ages,” Lyle said, watching as Lester heaved himself out of his office chair with more effort than usual. The other man wouldn’t thank him for offering help in the office unless actually bleeding from a major artery, he knew.

 

            Lester picked up his briefcase. Lyle took it away from him, and got an eyeroll for his pains. “How was your day?” Lester asked, determinedly neutral, but Lyle could hear the frustrated edge to his voice. Much like Liz, Lester hated to be fussed over.

 

            Lyle shrugged, keeping his voice light and casual, knowing his boyfriend would regret it and become unhelpfully self-flagellating if he let him pick a fight. “Fine. Slept, mainly. Woke up just before Liz got home. She’s cooking, by the way.”

 

            “Oh?”

 

            “Chicken soup and chocolate cake.”

 

            “Ah. So she also persists in the delusion that I’m at death’s door.”

 

            “You forget she saw you this morning, and by all accounts you looked nearly as bad then-”

 

            “The corrupting effect of this workplace on Miss Wickes’ discretion is a _constant_ –”

 

            “-and I think she’s been planning this meal since she walked out the door,” Lyle persisted, ignoring Lester’s half-finished comment.

 

            Lester let it go.

 

            Lyle hefted the briefcase unobtrusively, wondering how much work it contained, and how much of that was genuinely essential, then decided that that was a fight to be had at some other time. Possibly it could be avoided entirely by shovelling Lester into bed and letting him fall asleep.

 

            As they reached the car, Lyle slung the briefcase into the footwell of the back seat, and ceremoniously opened the door for his boyfriend, who gave him a fishy look but said nothing – a sure sign that he was really quite sick. Lyle got into the driver’s seat and pulled out of his parking space, mind whirring. Liz’s youngest brother Nicky, who had spent the previous weekend at Lester’s – Lyle had cleared out to his own hardly-used accommodation on the grounds that Nicky was permanently spoiling for a fight as matters stood and he didn’t feel the need to be either a witness or an aggravation – had certainly been sniffly, pale and silent. But Lyle never could tell the difference between Nicky sullen and Nicky subdued, and all Lesters generally looked as though they lived in a library and never saw the sun.

 

            “Heard from Kathy?” he tried.

 

            Lester sneezed, and clapped the handkerchief to his nose again. “Yes. Nicky forgot his jeans and she wanted to know when Liz would be coming to her house.”

 

            “Is he still sick?” Lyle said, bypassing the question of Liz visiting Kathy. Liz had a profound dislike of her mother, founded chiefly on Kathy’s disdain for her preferred extracurricular activities and discomfort with her sexual orientation, and was more than prepared to raise hell to avoid spending the weekend with her. There had been a very brief thaw in relations not long after Liz’s brother Jamie’s death, but Liz’s fine antennae for trouble had led her to pick up on some of Kathy’s less savoury opinions on her ex-husband, resulting in a row of truly epic proportions which had ended with Liz storming out and going to ground in her best friend’s house and Kathy and James turning on each other. Liz had barely spoken to her mother since; Lester was definitely not equipped to deal with the question of actual visits while he was this sick.

 

            “No. At least, Kathy sent him to school yesterday regardless of complaints, so if he’s still saying he’s sick then he’s probably malingering.” Lester leant back in his seat. “I’m sure I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.”

 

            “Ditzy texted me. You need a couple of days.”

 

            “I do _not_ -” Lester broke off, racked by a series of hacking coughs that made Lyle wonder whether to send him to the doctor’s or invite Ditzy round for a beer and unsubtle medical interrogation, whichever would be fastest.

 

            “You were saying, sweetpea?” Lyle said, carefully not taking out a cyclist on the roundabout.

 

            “Damn it, Jon!”

 

            Lyle didn’t rise to the bait, and Lester quickly subsided.

 

           

            They took the lift up to the flat, since Lester almost certainly couldn’t manage the stairs without unnecessary grief, and when they made it inside Liz was briskly slapping chocolate icing onto the sides of a cake. The breakfast bar was covered in a heady mix of baking ingredients and homework, and although the flat’s usual air of respectable tidiness prevailed, Liz had successfully messed things up a little.

 

            “Hey, Dad,” she said, looking up and grinning at Lester. “Miss Wickes says you’re sick. Don’t breathe on me, okay?”

 

            “Horrible child,” Lester said affectionately. Lyle smiled.

 

            “There’s camomile tea in the cupboard and water in the kettle,” Liz said, and promptly cut herself on the palette knife. “Ow. How the hell did I do that? Do you want a cup to take to bed?”

 

            “No,” Lester said. “Firstly, I do not like camomile tea, and secondly, I am not going to bed.”

 

            Liz paused and gave Lester a beady stare. “I’ll give you the first,” she said, in an oddly measured tone for someone who was also sucking a cut finger, “I know no-one likes that stuff but me, but seriously, Dad? You look like you’re about to faint.”

 

            “Thank you, I am not.”

 

            “Wrong,” Lyle said, steadying Lester as he swayed slightly. “Camomile tea tastes like gnat’s piss –”

 

            “It helps me sleep!” Liz yelped.

 

            “-I don’t understand why you can’t just drink Horlicks like everyone else-”

 

            “Because I’m not, like, _eighty_ –”

 

            “Oh, my God,” Lester broke in, sounding weary and oddly amused. “Shut up, both of you. I _am_ going to bed. You’re both exhausting.”

 

            “But you love us for it,” Liz chirped, brandishing her palette knife and a shit-eating grin. “D’you want your dinner now, or later? Chicken soup and toast…”

 

            “I will be taking a shower,” Lester said with dignity. “A bowl of soup and some toast would be most acceptable in about half an hour.”

 

            “Your wish, my command,” said Liz.

 

            Lester proceeded a little shakily towards the bathroom, and Liz gave Lyle a slightly worried look. “Is he actually okay?”

 

            “Ditzy says he just needs some paracetamol and a couple of days off work,” Lyle assured her. “If he were seriously _not_ okay, Ditzy would have mentioned. Where’s Juliet gone?”

 

            “Home. Family supper with her mum and her uncle Ben.”

 

            “Oh. Can I have a piece of cake?”

 

            “No, you greedy sod. I haven’t finished icing it yet.”

 

***

 

            “Thank you, Liz,” Lester said some time later, as Lyle took the tea-tray away from him, along with a half-finished bowl of soup and a plate containing two lonely, heavily buttered fingers of toast. “That was delicious. I’m sorry, I just wasn’t-”

 

            “I know,” Liz said, and hugged him briefly. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea?”

 

            “No. Darling, I abominate tea in all its forms. Camomile included.”

 

            “Yeah, but… honey and lemon?”

 

            Lester caught his daughter’s eye. “Liz, no hot or cold beverage known to man is going to fix the flu.”

 

            Liz snuggled up to him. “Should’ve told Jon that. He’s gone to make you a hot toddy.”

 

            “You’re both fussing. It’s revolting.” Still, Lester put an arm around her. “Liz, I don’t want you to catch this, so – give me a hug, and say goodnight, all right? I’m really tired.”

 

            Liz reluctantly gave him the requested hug and slid off the bed. “Nicky gave you this, didn’t he?”

 

            “Yes. He spent all weekend hugging me. In hindsight, I suspect a form of biological warfare.”

 

            He spoke lightly, but Liz’s face was serious when she shook her head. “I think he just misses you. And he’s stopped thinking you’re the Antichrist now. I mean, fair enough, you never – It’s not like me and Mum. He misses you.”

 

            Lester blinked hard, and was conscious of a slight prickling at the corner of his eyes. Nicky had taken his mother’s part over the last couple of years, and Lester was accustomed – thought not inured – to being treated like a leper by him. “You think so?”

 

            Liz shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. “Yeah. Don’t tell him I said so.”

           

            “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

            “And he won’t actually, y’know, say it.”

 

            “I never thought he would.”

 

            “But I thought you might – maybe, if you didn’t know…”

 

            “Thank you, Liz.”

 

            Liz blushed, shuffled some more, and backed out of the room, nearly colliding with Jon on his way in with a hot toddy and two paracetamol. “Night, Jon. Night, Dad.”

 

            Lyle ruffled her hair with his relatively free hand, precipitating a vile curse, and shut the door on her very gently.

 

            “Oh, is that for me?” Lester said, eyeing the hot toddy with – for once – a marked lack of enthusiasm.

 

            “Only if you want a sip. It’s mine.” Lyle passed over the paracetamol and climbed onto the bed, carefully not spilling his hot toddy. “Reckon you can sleep?”

 

            “I think so.” Lester checked the location of Lyle’s drink and then, reassured, slid down in the bed and rested his head on the pillows just beside his boyfriend’s leg. Silently, Lyle’s hand dropped to rest on his head, stroking his hair, the delicate scroll of his ear, the nape of his neck. Soothed, Lester went to sleep.        

 


End file.
